Monday, October 01, 2007

Heaven Help Us, One And All

SCHIP. It's not just for Commies anymore. National Center for Public Policy Research (09.07):

"(F)airness has never been the primary concern of the political left on health care. The primary concern has been achieving a universal, government-run system. Providing near universal coverage for children, and funding it via cigarette taxes, is a big step toward achieving that goal."

"No one has the nerve to brand this country’s purest systems of 'socialized medicine' — the military and veterans hospitals — for what they are. In both systems, care is not only paid for by the government but delivered in government facilities by doctors who are government employees.

Even so, a parade of Washington’s political dignitaries, including President Bush, has turned to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., for checkups and treatment, without ideological complaint. Politicians who deplore government-run health care for average Americans are only too happy to use it themselves."

And SCHIP? "The State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip, was denigrated by one Republican congressman [ed. - that would be Jeb Hensarling (R - TX5)] this week as 'a government-run socialized wolf masquerading in the sheep skin of children’s health.'"

"It might better be thought of as a 'double-payer system' in which the states and the federal government put up the money, the states take the lead in defining the program and the actual care is typically delivered through private health plans by private doctors and hospitals."